CHAPTER ONE

JENI

A chill crawled up my spine as I hovered over the crib and stared down at my sleeping baby’s thick black hair. He just turned four months—the exact amount of time King had been dead. Though it felt like longer. A lifetime ago.

“God, I miss him, Draco.” I reached down and gently brushed a lock of soft hair from his forehead. “I’m so sorry this is happening to us.” This was not the life I imagined for us. Alone. Danger lurking. No real protection.

King was supposed to be here, watching over us, but no. One minute, he was with me in the delivery room, and the next he was lying in a pool of blood. Dead.

I winced as images of the horrific moment bombarded my mind. I still couldn’t accept he was gone. I mean, really? Just like that? A man who’d defied death for thousands of years had been snuffed out with a simple dagger?

Fine. Not so simple.

Ansin, the man who did the deed just a few feet from my newborn baby, once told me that the dagger had been gifted directly from God to a druid man around the first century. It could cut through any spell, magic, curses—whateverthehell you called the sort of crap that kept people like King from dying for thousands of years. Anyway, the dagger released King and his soul from the world of the living. “Permanently,” Ansin had said.

Bullshit. I wasn’t buying it. Of course, I was struggling to believe a lot of things lately.

“Eh-hem,” said a low deep voice behind me.

With a gasp, I swiveled on my heel. “Ansin, you can’t just come barging in like this.”

With an amused smirk, he leaned his tall, sturdy body against the doorframe. From the look of his windblown dark hair, he’d ridden a motorcycle here. Note how I said a motorcycle. That’s because when Ansin wanted to ride one, he just walked up to whoever and said: “Give me your bike.” They handed it over, and Ansin used it until he was done. He gave zero fucks about returning it, just like he gave no fucks about what anyone thought.

Stone cold to the core.

But Ansin’s off-putting traits didn’t end there, with his scarred-up face and intense dark eyes. Yet I wouldn’t call him ugly. There was definitely something about Ansin that made it difficult to look away, like some exotic creature from another time, marred by years of violence. For the record, Ansin usually carried out the violence—thus the reason he was the last living member of Ten Club, the most depraved group of elitists to ever roam the earth.

“It is my house,” he said, pushing his jaw-length hair from his eyes. “I’ll enter when I choose.”

Not wanting to wake Draco, I slid past Ansin, my shoulder brushing his chest. Prickly goosebumps rolled down my arm. His powers were no joke, which was why I had to be careful around him.

The sounds of heavy biker boots followed me to the kitchen.

I grabbed two white mugs from the cupboard beside the professional-grade stainless steel refrigerator. Ansin had all the money in the world but owned very little aside from this house and the fancy things in it. Which he’d bought for me. Personally, he saw no value in owning material items. Things came; they went. So did people. Power was the only currency he cared for.

“Coffee?” I grabbed a bag of grounds.

“Sure.”

I set up the fancy Italian drip machine and then turned to face him. Under the bright kitchen lights, the golden rings around his dark irises gave off an otherworldly vibe. Even his deep olive skin looked more…not completely human. Yes, to my knowledge, he was a man, but not like any I’d ever met. Not even King could match his mind-control tricks.

I exhaled slowly, determined not to let my fear of Ansin bubble to the surface. “Ansin, we had a deal. I said I would live here, but not with you.”

“I don’t live here.”

“Coming and going as you please is the behavior of a person who does. That’s the problem.”

He flashed a stiff smile. I never knew if he was amused, insulted, or pissed off when he smiled that way.

“I suggest you be more specific with your terms the next time we strike a deal,” he said.

“No,” I protested. “We’re not playing the fine-print game, Ansin. I’m not one of your degenerate Ten Club buddies.” They’d always looked for creative ways to fuck each other over.

“No one’s perfect.”

I offered a disapproving look. “I’m serious, Ansin. I’m not going to write up a two-hundred-page contract for every agreement we make. So you either act honorably, or there will be no more agreements.”

“Funny you should mention that…” He rubbed his scruffy chin, where hairless lines crisscrossed through the stubble. Scars. And they didn’t end there. His entire body, though muscled and dripping with intense power, was a record of his sordid past.

“I’m waiting.” To my knowledge, Ansin never did anything without a reason. So why was he here? He hadn’t been around for weeks. A blessing and a curse. I didn’t want such an evil man around Draco, but Ansin was just the sort of wolf that kept the other wolves at bay.

“Your time is up,” he said.

“Time for what? Sorry. Drawing a blank here.”

“I am expecting you to make good on your promise. Personally, I thought I was being generous—allowing you time to heal after giving birth to another man’s child—but, unfortunately, my generosity has run out.”

My stomach turned to granite. Was he serious? He was here to call in my debt? “I’m not marrying you, Ansin. And I’m not having any more children.”

I was about to go for the sugar when the golden rings around his irises flickered to black.

Fuck. That can’t be good. I wanted to step back, but the counter and gurgling coffee maker were behind me.

“I saved your precious King. Now you owe me,” he said, his voice low and menacing.

Technically, he was right. King had been captured, drugged, and used like a human parts store by some crazy bitch named Sage, who’d pickled his organs. She believed they gave her powers. Maybe they did. I’d seen things in her house that defied logic, including a tattoo she’d given King to ensure he wouldn’t die—some black, tribal collar. Little did she know it was overkill. King was already cursed by the Seers, his soul bound to me in this world so he’d be unable to join his original family in the afterlife.

In any case, Sage had hollowed King out—heart, liver, kidneys, and all—and then waited for him to heal so she could play Operation all over again.

No living being, evil or otherwise, deserved that kind of fate. So I made a deal with Ansin: King’s freedom in exchange for me. What was the fine print? Ansin wanted to restart his family’s bloodline, which had been wiped out during the Age of the Roman Empire. Yes, Ansin was just that old, which was how he knew every trick in the book. My only leverage was being the last living Seer in the world. He needed my powerful bloodline to revive his.

“Well, I’m sorry to inform you, Ansin, but our deal is void. You killed King with your fun little dagger.”

“As I told him I eventually would.”

“And I disagreed.” I slammed my fist on the counter. “You fucking killed the father of my baby.”

“And I’ll remind you that it was what he wanted.”

“His wants weren’t part of our deal!” I yelled. “And if you want to play the ‘oh well, you should have been more specific’ game, then I’ll play the same: You should have been more specific with our deal. I never said when I would marry you. I never said when I would have your children. So as far as I’m concerned, you can wait until I’m ready.” Never.

He narrowed his dark eyes. I could tell that he didn’t like being beaten at his own game. Well, too damned bad.

He drew a slow breath and exhaled with a grumble. “I know you loved him, Jeni, but he did not want you. In fact, he was about to kill you.”

“Stop. Don’t say another word.” I balled my fists. I couldn’t listen to this. Mostly because it was true. King never wanted me. The baby only happened because King had made himself forget his dead wife. Later, that mindfuckery would be broken, and King would make it perfectly clear I meant nothing to him.

As for King wanting to kill me, that part was also true. Because, apparently, I was the one who killed King’s pregnant wife and baby son in cold blood twenty-something years ago. Only, I had no recollection of it. Probably because I hadn’t even been born yet! This whole thing was based on the assumption that I had been a Seer named Hagne in another life. Ridiculous.

“Jeni.” Ansin lowered his voice. “It is time for you to accept the truth and move on. King is dead and has crossed over to be reunited with his family. It was what he wanted.”

“I know that. So what’s your point?”

He stepped around the counter and stared down at me. He was well over six feet, compared to me at five feet two inches.

The fine hair on my arms stiffened, and my heart accelerated. The air between us hummed with his powerful energy.

Here was the thing about Ansin: he intrigued me. He had from the first moment we met when he strutted into a café and the room of patrons collectively shit themselves. I couldn’t look away. And it wasn’t because of his unusual looks or his ability to make a person do anything he wanted with one simple word. It was his utter lack of fear. He wasn’t afraid of life, death, his enemies, or pain.

I, on the other hand, had lived most of my life hiding under a rock, barely able to look a stranger in the eyes. Later, I’d come to understand it had more to do with my ignorance. I had no clue what a Seer was or that I had the ability to read people’s thoughts. Ugly, dark thoughts. Thoughts that seeped into my head and made the world a terrifying place.

Then King came along and showed me the truth, but that didn’t change facts: I used to be weak, timid, and afraid of my own shadow, which made me a magnet for every sadistic SOB in a ten-mile radius. Something about me screamed victim. But King had no interest in teaching me squat; meanwhile Ansin wanted me to be powerful and fearless like him. I wanted it, too.

“Do you really need to ask what my point is, Jeni?”

“You don’t need to tell me King is dead,” I said quietly, pushing back the sadness. “I watched you kill him. Which brings me back to my prior point: you broke our deal.”

“Fuck the deal, Jeni. That was my point. Fuck the deal and fuck King. He is the past. I am your future.”

What future? Did he mean the one where I’m punished for a crime I committed in a past life?

“According to the Seers,” I said, “I am cursed to love a man who will never love me back and cursed to be reminded of it every single day as I raise his child. I’m cursed to belong to another man who will make me, and I quote, ‘suffer in unimaginable ways’ because I am incapable of ever loving him back. So don’t talk to me about my future, Ansin.”

“Do not listen to them, Jeni. The Seers are manipulative charlatans.” Ansin took my hand and pressed it over his heart. “It is time for you to use your gifts and see the truth. You were always meant to be mine. You were never King’s.”